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Xinhua Insight: Yangtze cities seek joint development

Xinhua, August 11, 2015 Adjust font size:

Cities around the middle reaches of the Yangtze River are becoming more integrated through transport links and business partnerships, as China tries to boost growth inland of the affluent east coast.

TRAIN GAIN

The capital cities of Hubei, Jiangxi, and Hunan provinces have been linked by high-speed railways. People can now shuttle between Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi Province, and Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, or between Changsha and Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province, in two hours.

The high-speed line between Wuhan and Nanchang is scheduled to be put into operation in 2016, said Li Zhigang, deputy director of the Jiangxi Provincial Commission of Development and Reform.

The new lines are some of the most noticeable signs of progress since April 5, when China unveiled a plan to develop city clusters in this area in the hope of creating a new economic growth engine and encouraging urbanization.

The clusters, which cover 317,000 square km, are a key part of the "Rise of central China" strategy, intended to help the country achieve more balanced development.

The governments of the three provinces have been swift in putting the plan into action, signing agreements with each other to strengthen economic ties and improve regional transportation.

"A dozen dead-end expressways have been extended and connected with each other in the area in recent years," according to Li.

Hubei, Jiangxi, and Hunan are now also working to set up an inland waterway system consisting of the middle reaches of Yangtze and its tributaries.

To build the waterway system, lots of river courses need be dredged and some old ports along the rivers renovated, said Liang Bikang, deputy director of the Jiangxi Provincial Transport Department.

SHARING IS CARING

Besides infrastructure, residents of the region's cities have been allowed to share more public services, breaking the administrative restrictions that commonly tie Chinese to services in their home province. For example, people from Huangmei County in Hubei can now use their medicare cards to pay for treatment in neighboring Jiujiang City in Jiangxi.

The labor and social security departments in the two places have also started to exchange employment information to offer more job opportunities to people across the area, said Dai Lingfang, deputy director of the Jiujiang Municipal Commission of Development and Reform.

The trend of regional integration will strengthen the flow of talent among city clusters, believes Yu Xuefeng, an official with the Jiangxi Provincial Commission of Development and Reform.

DEALS ON TRAIN WHEELS

With enterprises in the three provinces tending to focus on similar industrial areas such as petrochemicals, steel and automobile manufacturing, regional competition has traditionally been intense.

However, since the drive for city clusters and better infrastructure, enterprises across provincial borders are increasingly seeking cooperation, Li Zhigang said.

The booming Xunyang District in Jiujiang City signed a deal in July 2014 with the comparatively backward Huangmei County in Hubei to build an industrial park in the county. Xunyang lacks land while Huangmei is seeking economic development, so the deal would seem to be mutually beneficial.

Jiangxi-based WGTech Co., Ltd, a manufacturer of the glass used in flat panel displays, invested more than 1 billion yuan to build a plant in Wuhan's Optical Valley, a high-tech development zone, that opened in 2014.

Zou Yuli, a researcher with the Bureau of Commerce in Jiujiang, said there are 38 projects in Jiujiang invested in by Hubei-based enterprises, with the total investment running to 7.15 billion yuan (1.15 billion U.S. dollars). Another 17 projects feature investment from Hunan-based enterprises worth 6.07 billion yuan.

Some believe there is room for improvement in this regional development. The governments of these cities need to establish a coordination mechanism to promote better cooperation in industrial development and more efficient allocation of resources in the area, said Zhong Yu, an official with the Nanchang Municipal Urban and Rural Planning Bureau. Endi